Cue my leader and best fighter setting off to gather additional forces to prepare for a confrontation between the Dust Bandits I'm steadily warding off with the occasional payment.
Over the course of the next (again, real-time) day, I visited three new cities (including Catan, which is a truly impressive creation) and found five new recruits, among them a new medic and Mr. Infinite Wingdings, who I just named Foxtrot because that name is way too silly for me. It was time to make the return trek back to my outpost, so I could finally deal with those foolish Dust Bandits.
However (due to what appears to be a bug), I didn't hear anything from those Dust Bandits for at least a good two in-game weeks, allowing me to restructure my base and get a stronger infrastructure going to support that eventual battle.
I took a screenshot for my friend, who I'm playing the game alongside, to show him how my outpost was doing alongside his, which has been teched way further than mine:
What I didn't know was, literally right off-screen, was that Dust Bandit party I was waiting for. I killed them and declared war on those buggers, reasonably sure my almost full conglomerate of badasses was enough to take on their first assault on my outpost.
And then the time came. There was at least 25 of them against my 13-strong squad, minus my leader who was sprinting back to join the eventual battle after a hugely inconvenient trading run.
My leader didn't make it before the fighting kicked off, unfortunately, and joined in only after a minute of combat had passed. However, this wasn't exactly the only problem, as half of my forces behind the heavy-hitters decided to run away instead of engage the bandits who ran to attack my gate for some reason, leaving half of my forces to suffer as they worked through a silly bug.
Once everyone actually found themselves locked into combat (even my medics, who laid behind the main line of fighters on 'Blocking Only'), I realized the battle was actually turning in favor of the bandits. That was a scary moment, as my toughest fighters (even Foxtrot, the reformed Mr. Wingdings!) steadily fell to these far weaker but more numerous bandits.
Just when I thought that was scary, I realized that the battle was actually won by my toughest fighters in their 'second wind', having been knocked to the ground once already and rising to throw themselves at the just-as-depleted bandit forces with very little health.
This was the eventual outcome:
Holy shit.
I almost lost my new medic, one of my newer recruits, and almost every single one of my squadmates were downed in this battle. But I won. I took them down and it felt fucking amazing.
Thank you, Kenshi, for that insane moment.
